If you jumped into this game nearing halftime and then paid half attention while looking over the box score following the win you could get the impression Notre Dame played one heck of a game in a blowout over New Mexico. In some ways–as the Irish rolled to their most points since a 69-14 romp over Georgia Tech in 1977–Notre Dame purely outclassed the Lobos and brought a level of skill and athleticism the visitors were unable to counter. In other ways, the Irish continued to show signs of trouble on both sides of the ball.

Let’s recap Notre Dame’s second win of the season and their first home victory.

Stats Package

Offense

QB: B
RB: D-
TE: B-
OL: C+
WR: B+

Thank goodness for explosiveness, especially through the air. We’ve seen Notre Dame’s offense in action for a pair of football games this year and there is much work to do with efficiency. This, plus another slow start are the concerning aspects to the offense as the team gets ready to travel to Athens.

Take nothing away from Book and the skill players being able to torch New Mexico, though. Book completed 9 passes for 323 yards (including 113 yards on a pair of ‘pop’ pass touchdowns) for an absurd 35.8 yards per attempt extravaganza in the middle of the contest. In that mix were 4 passes of at least 20 yards to Chase Claypool, an amazing effort from Javon McKinley on a 65-yard touchdown, and a nice looping 29-yard pass to Tommy Tremble among others.

That Book was 6 of 15 for 37 yards on all other attempts speaks a lot to the lack of efficiency and worrisome 1st quarter but overall the Irish quarterback generally looked sharp and improved from the first game, he continues to protect the ball extremely well, and even led the team in rushing with a great success rate.

Certainly, this game was fun in the sense of watching backups having some success. The likes of McKinley, Brayden Lenzy, and Avery Davis combined for 218 receiving yards on 5 receptions!

The run game really sputtered and looks like it’s going to need a lot of work. Piling up 157 yards on the ground is quite poor against this type of opponent and while most of the time the 51.3% success rate wouldn’t normally be setting off alarm bells the overall rushing success rate was only 37.5% early into the 4th quarter. Worse still, the 3 scholarship running backs picked up 41 yards on 17 carries while neither Tony Jones or C’Bo Flemister had a run over 10 yards.

Run Success

Jones 3 of 6 (50%)
Clark 3 of 4 (75%)
Book 6 of 8 (75%)
Keys 1 of 1 (100%)
Jurkovec 0 of 3 (0%)
Flemister 1 of 7 (14.2%)
Kyren 3 of 4 (75%)
Lenzy 1 of 1 (100%)
Assaf 1 of 3 (33.3%)

The third down rate (1 of 10) also looks pretty bad but also needs some context. One attempt was a Book quarterback sneak and one came on a late walk-on Mick Assaf attempt. In “normal” short-yardage third down situations we saw Tony Jones get 3 carries and only convert once. Additionally, we saw a couple of goal line failures from Flemister on 1st and 2nd down that further added to the perceived short-yardage woes.

Still, the Irish did go 5 for 5 on 4th down attempts and those count, too. The Irish also seem purposely conservative in short-yardage this year with runs up the middle and no play-action. The latter was such a big part of the Book-led offense last year that you have to think Chip Long is hiding a lot of stuff for Georgia. I’m not sure I agree with that route if it’s true–I like to work on things in games to perfect them–but it does seem curious that in roughly a dozen short-yardage situations through 2 games the play-caller has been making the offensive line have to block damn near perfectly on really easy to defend formations and runs.

Even if we consider the pop passes a run we’ll have to see more of that type of misdirection against Georgia because the longest runs on the score sheet came from Book and Jurkovec against New Mexico. I hope to have something on the running backs this upcoming week–needless to say things are not looking good at this position. I like Kyren Williams the best for what this offense needs and I think it’s pretty telling a veteran like Tony Jones only picked up 6 carries with a pair of injured tailbacks on the sidelines.

Defense

DL: B
LB: B
DB: B+

I’m okay with the defense thus far this season, for the most part. They feel like exactly where they should be given the personnel losses from a year ago. They are making plays (7 TFL, 3 interceptions) and are just not quite sharp enough to completely dominate an opponent. Besides, a quiet season thus far from Julian Okwara this was what we expected from the Irish defense, no?

Holding the Lobos to 4.8 YPP (just below their 2018 average) doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy although that figure was 3.8 YPP through 3 quarters and the Irish were liberally substituting on defense from the first quarter onward.

I’m not really thrilled with New Mexico’s 22 first downs especially after giving up 21 to Louisville. The Irish allowed 11 in the first half which was particularly frustrating, including a trio of first downs allowed via penalty. The defense is putting itself in position to get off the field but is also allowing poor offenses to continue drives something a team like Georgia will feast upon.

The defense is also allowing too many long runs, an imbalance with the offense that feels like is going to make a couple of the mediocre opponents on the schedule stay in games this season unless the Irish clean this up. Notre Dame is currently 110th nationally in 10+ yard rushes allowed and that’s with most of the country having played 3 games already! At this pace per game, only Kent State has been worse. The raw stats just aren’t pretty, the Irish are 120th in rushing yards allowed per game and 107th in yards per carry allowed.

Stuffs vs. New Mexico

(season stuffs in parentheses)

Bilal – 4 (4.5)
Hayes – 3 (4)
Bauer – 2 (2)
MTA – 2 (3)
Ademilola, Jay – 2 (3.5)
White – 1.5 (5)
Elliott – 1 (1)
JOK – 1 (2.5)
Kareem – 1 (2)
Ogundeji – 1 (3)
Gilman – 0.5 (4)
Brown – 0.5 (0.5)
Foskey – 0.5 (0.5)
NaNa – 0.5 (0.5)
Spears – 0.5 (0.5)

I have to admit that Lobos quarterback Sheriron Jones has to be in the running as the worst signal-caller the Irish have faced in the Kelly-era. He had a couple nice runs but otherwise was about as inaccurate as I’ve seen in over a decade inside Notre Dame Stadium. Jones was benched at the half after putting up a total QBR of 3.2 with 4 of 15 passing for 19 yards and 3 picks.

The defense does seem close to improving soon. It’s unfortunate that Georgia is the next game because any progress could be tossed out the window after the visit to Athens. Nevertheless, you look at someone like Asmar Bilal with a team-leading 7 solo tackles and 4 stuffs and guys are beginning to step up in positions where veteran presence is needed. The Irish are going to need a huge night from him and Drew White against the Dawgs. Perhaps we’ll see the run defense look better (relative to opponent of course) once there isn’t as much substituting.

I’ve been critical of Daelin Hayes throughout his career as he lost his starting job last August and to me has played like a strong end inside a weak end body. I mean, you can only get so excited about your top pass rushing position doing a good job at eating blocks in the run game. However, against the Lobos Hayes may have had his best game of his career. In fact, through 2 games I would venture a guess Hayes has been no worse than the third best graded player on the entire team. He’s been really good in 2019.

Final Thoughts

Kyle Hamilton setting the tempo with a pick six warms all of our hearts. He has 37 more games in an Irish uniform (assuming he goes pro after his junior season) to get 17 more interceptions for the school record. Can he do it?

I wasn’t expecting Javon McKinley to be the second-leading receiver through two games. His place on the 2020 roster is now really intriguing. Ditto for Avery Davis’ spot after his 59-yard touchdown. Sometimes it’s fun to play tomato cans and we get to see some backups who can actually perform well.

My pleasant surprises so far in 2019 include: Jayson Ademilola, Drew White, the aforementioned Hayes and Lawrence Keys. I’d like to see more from: Kurt Hinish, Chris Finke, Jarrett Patterson, and Brock Wright.

Notre Dame only has 4 sacks through 2 games, this is off last year’s pace which was closer to 3 per game. However, the two opponents so far clearly want nothing to do with holding the ball in the pocket and it is definitely helping the Irish passing defense. Right now, Notre Dame is 3rd nationally in opponent quarterback rating, 1st in opponent completion percentage, and 6th in opponent yards per attempt. Granted, some really talent deficient quarterbacks have helped the pass defense thus far, however, as the quarterback play improves on the schedule they should hold on to the ball a little longer looking for holes in the Irish secondary and increase the amount of sacks.

I was pretty shocked that Jurkovec didn’t get all of the garbage time reps. You’d think that with Book’s proclivity for running the ball (he might get 20 carries against Georgia) we’d need some seasoning with the backup. Although, maybe they are afraid of Jurkovec getting hurt, too (there is some talk about him dealing with a thigh injury)? Either way, it seemed like a missed opportunity even if Brendon Clark looked more than competent in the 4th quarter.

Notre Dame averaged over 73 offensive plays per game last year and hit just 65 plays again against New Mexico for the second game in a row for 2019. That’s a low for 2018-19. I’m not sure what it means yet if anything (defensive snaps are up a bit to 75 per game) although I’m quick to point to the run defense for not being sharp enough as the main reason. That, plus the Irish offense has been making a living on explosive, short drives.

Sideline SkyCam Debate

Sideline SkyCam is a bad invention.

It’s time to roast the Sideline SkyCam. During the spring game NBC tried this out but had to make some late alterations due to high winds and claiming it wasn’t rolled out correctly. On Saturday afternoon we were treated to the real thing and it is awful.

I’m basically repeating myself from the spring that the Sideline SkyCam has 3 fatal flaws. One, it is giving the camera operator a ton of freedom to “guess” the play based on formation. I’ll admit at times when it zooms in on a tight formation and the ball is run up the middle you feel closer to the action and that is fine. Pretty much anything else is too difficult for the camera to cover effectively, though. While some snaps the camera does show more of the field I feel like on a per snap basis there’s too much zooming in and we’re seeing less of the field.

Two, the camera is moving far too much and in concert with point one above feels like way too much motion for a play-by-play camera. Very subtle zooming is fine but combining that with lateral movement is not appealing for television viewers. NBC said they would reduce the amount of pre-snap movement but the movement during the play is also a deficit to television viewers.

Three, the angles largely suck. This should be the biggest advantage for the camera in NBC’s thinking but it seems much worse than a normal camera set up. I’ve included 4 shots above:

1) Keys kickoff return. This extremely overhead shot gives us only a sliver view of the field.

2) The Davis touchdown. The camera was zoomed in too much at the snap, so much that Davis came out of nowhere on the pop pass. The operator then guessed wrong that Davis didn’t have the ball and he was a million miles away at the top of screen.

3) A live shot on McKinley’s touchdown. How does showing that benefit anyone? How many more defenders does he have to beat to score? We have no idea!

4) The late touchdown pass to Lenzy. There’s just something about the angle that doesn’t look right. The camera is too low and makes the ground seem tilted in a way that Lenzy looks 1,000 feet away from Book.

According to the Athletic’s Pete Sampson Twitter poll 86% of over 3,300 votes came in against the Sideline SkyCam. Has this fan base ever agreed on anything quite like this!?? The camera should be utilized for replays once producers can see which part of a play was worth showing and not as the main play-by-play camera. Continuing with this set up would be the height of folly for NBC Sports.